Escape From Pianosa

BIG is holding its Fall auditions this Saturday at 12pm at the Hamilton Arts Collective. For more details, check out BIG’s official MySpace blog, where I am now blogging.

This is an idea I hear a lot from people that until recently, I took for granted. “Writers are in high demand” or “it’s so hard to find people who can write well.” Anecdotally, this rings true for me, but when I went looking for jobs as a writer, I found that the market wasn’t so hot. Go to Craigslist and you’ll find that many of the listings for writers don’t pay anything. Most writing jobs have starting salaries in the 30 to 35k range, if you can find one.

And so I think that writing is an excellent skill to have, but in the job market it’s more valuable as a secondary skill. A good manager is very valuable, and a good manager with excellent writing skills is marginally better. Same for engineers or software developers or any other profession. But from my limited experience on the job hunt, I don’t think writers per se are in high demand.

When I shifted my job search from writing to marketing/web/technology, I really started getting interviews, call-backs, and interest.

This season of Curb has been a little slow but that was a great line.

Seth Godin is like this never-ending generator of cool ideas and insights. Every time I read something that he writes, I can feel the connections forming in my brain…

My philosophy then, and my philosophy now, is that learning the first 80% of something new takes 20% of the effort. My goal in college was not to become an expert on phenomenology or civil engineering; my goal was to understand the framework of as many disciplines as I could.

That’s me. I love learning the first 80% of something. It’s a personality trait that serves me well. I try lots of new things because they fascinate me and I find myself knowing a little bit about a lot of things. And the more ideas or subjects or philosophies or careers that you sample, the more likely you are to find one that you really love. Then you can spend the effort of learning the last 20%.

So much in life is simple luck. Finding your passion is the same. When I read about people who always knew what they wanted to be, I think yeah, that’s because so many people start that way. How many people, at age 12, decide they want to be actors or dancers or firefighters? Lots. So when people end up in those professions, it’s not uncommon for them to have started down that path at an early age.

What you don’t hear about is all the people who started out dreaming of becoming an actor, only to discover later that what really excites (or pays) them is accounting or software or engineering. People overestimate their ability to predict what they will enjoy. To overcome that bias, you have to lean towards experimentation.

He trumpeted around his pen for a few minutes, and then keeled over on his side. Horrified, the researchers tried to revive him, but about an hour later he was dead. The three scientists sheepishly concluded that, “It appears that the elephant is highly sensitive to the effects of LSD.”

From The Top 20 Most Bizarre Experiments of All Time.

HT: Marginal Revolution.

Chris doesn’t have a blog, but you can still find him on the internets, saying goodbye to his white coat. Last night he asked me to bring back some of my old blog posts from back in the day, you know, the one about the blind lady you worked with. Oh yeah, here it is:

I returned from lunch this afternoon to discover that not one, but two residents of aisle C were sound asleep. I’d like to protect their identities, so let’s just call our first subject “the blind Asian woman.” Apparently she doesn’t have much work to do because she literally sleeps half the day. How does this happen? What kind of manager tolerates this? Seems to me, if you’re blind, you better go out of your way to justify your space on the payroll. Otherwise people might start wondering…

It gets worse though. The other sleeping co-worker is the guy whose job is, get this, to help the blind lady! She’s a programmer and she has trouble seeing the screen. So he goes into her cube–ostensibly–to help her with her program. Usually they just fight:

“Why you touching my screen!”
“I’m looking for an email I deleted!”
“No touch my screen!”
“Listen blind Asian woman, I need to find an email that I deleted, ok?”
“It’s not there!”
“How do you know? You can’t see the screen!”

How long does this take? How much time does he spend ‘helping’ her? Maybe 30 minutes a day. Wanna know what he’s doing now? Let me go check. Big fucking surprise! He’s passed out in his chair with a book in his hands! I love the government. Nap time.

Nora told me I was her hero for not having a real job and that she doesn’t want me to change. Chris agrees.  All this time I felt somewhat like a bum, but no, I’m not. I’m a hero. That’s right. It’s not just firefighters that get to be heroes. It’s people like me. People brave enough to say “no” to the 9 to 5, even if it means living in your parents house for months at a time, sleeping in a little bed that’s two inches shorter than your body. The search for meaning is long and the examined life is hard. Don’t give up brave soldiers, don’t ever give up.

“An Incomplete Manifesto for Growth.” Especially…

1. Allow events to change you. You have to be willing to grow. Growth is different from something that happens to you. You produce it. You live it. The prerequisites for growth: the openness to experience events and the willingness to be changed by them.

14. Don’t be cool. Cool is conservative fear dressed in black. Free yourself from limits of this sort.

18. Stay up late. Strange things happen when you’ve gone too far, been up too long, worked too hard, and you’re separated from the rest of the world.

Clara touches on something that’s been running through my head for the past few months, that there’s this paradox between happiness and ambition. Happiness implies that you are content with what you have today, in this moment. And so I want to be happy, but I cannot square this desire with my other desires… to get a better job, to become a better improviser, to achieve and to change the world. There’s gotta be a way out of this; somehow you can be happy and ambitious, right?

My theory: Maybe contentment simply isn’t in our genes. Thanking one’s lucky stars serves no evolutionary purpose. As the dissatisfied and restless update their lives, always chasing what’s bigger and better, those who cash in too early get left in the dust. What’s more, life is short. Too much blissful rumination about the good things can distract a person from the bad that needs attention.

From an evolutionary standpoint, it seems that someone too easily contented will find himself too easily eaten by a large beast. Or his mate may sense his lack of ambition and head for greener pastures. I mean, to be 100% happy with your situation can only be a temporary thing. You’ll get hungry sooner or later.

I was almost disappointed to find my mystery tenant had moved on to greener pastures. I even brought my camera for the people who wouldn’t believe me when I say there was a bum living in my back yard. Alas, his timing was impeccable as the girl demanded a tour of the back. It’s so cute she said, yes, I thought you could even live here if you wanted…